American Nuremberg Judge Rubbishes Nuremberg Trials

If I were a film maker, it would be a wonderful subject.  Here's some great stuff from Irving's book showing Goring kicking Jackson's pathetic, lying ass:

THE DAY was approaching for which Go?ring – and the entire courtroom – had been waiting. Like an athlete coming out of training he was now nearing his peak performance. Jackson had done everything he could to demoralise, deflate, and injure Go?ring, already weakened by months of harsh prison conditions and a starvation diet that had cut his weight from 264 pounds to 186. He was fifty-three, but he was a man with a mission: he was convinced that he could stay the course better than this whisky-soaked American small-town lawyer. While the judges and prosecutors had been living the good life, the months of incarceration, isolation, and semi-starvation had not beaten Go?ring down at all; they had hardened him, and given him time to reflect, to marshal his thoughts, and to sharpen his wit. On March 6 he passed Field-Marshal Erhard Milch, his old enemy, in the jailhouse corridor.

Milch, who had been brought back from England in the hope that he could be intimidated into testifying against Speer and his former commander-in-chief, was astonished to see Go?ring so fit and slim. Despite the manacles fastening them to their escorts, the two Luftwaffe officers exchanged forbidden salutes....

As Go?ring now began to speak from the witness stand on Wednesday March 13, the whole building was packed. The lion was not only fighting back, he erupted in glistening oratory, embellishing his answers with a ready humour that evoked gales of laughter from the public galleries. He hoped that somewhere out in the forests surrounding the city his wife and little girl were proud witnesses to this, his last stand. Millions of radio listeners around the world listened to the performance. In prison camps in Britain, across liberated Europe, and in America the men poured out into the open to cluster around the loudspeakers as ‘Hermann’s’ unmistakable voice echoed around their Quonset and Nissen huts. Former German prisoners-of-war have admitted to this author that they stood up and cheered, enthralled at the audio-spectacle of the Reichsmarschall fighting back for Germany.

The Allied and licensed German journalists crowding the press tables in the courthouse building at Nuremberg were speechless, having as Jackson wryly noted believed their own news stories that the Reichsmarschall was a dope fiend, a physical wreck, and a neurotic.  His first day was a triumph; for the prosecution it produced a de?ba?cle which threatened to dismantle the whole edifice that Jackson and his colleagues had painstakingly laboured to erect. Smoking his long meerschaum pipe afterwards, the Reichsmarschall sat on the cot in his cell and stretched out an arm for Dr Gilbert to see – it was as steady as a rock...

BROADCAST AGAIN live around the world, the Go?ring–Jackson duel began in earnest on Monday March 18. His hair slicked back, his eyes proud and defiant, Go?ring strode to the stand. He had the measure of this court now. He knew that Jackson, unaccustomed to the cut and thrust of courtroom advocacy for several years now, would be at a disadvantage, and particularly here – in a court where every word had first to be translated to him. Go?ring had a grasp of English, and that gave him a tactical edge. Alert to the crucial importance of this day, Jackson faltered. He had intended first to slap Go?ring into place by asking about his anti-Jewish decrees and his sumptuous art collection.

In what proved a fatal change of plan, he decided at the last moment to start with weightier and more general political allegations against Go?ring. ‘The cross-examination,’ recorded Sir Norman Birkett in his own notes, ‘had not proceeded more than ten minutes before it was seen that he was the complete master of Mr Justice Jackson. Suave, shrewd, adroit, capable, resourceful, he quickly saw the elements of the situation, and as his confidence grew, his mastery became more apparent.... For almost two days he held the stage without interruption of any kind.’

Far from denying Jackson’s sweeping charges, Go?ring was glad to admit them: he was proud of having destroyed the Weimar republic and of having suppressed the parliamentary opposition. This unexpected defence, for which Gilbert had not prepared him, wrong-footed Jackson. When Go?ring launched into a long discourse, Jackson peremptorily ordered him – as he would have in a New York court – to answer yes or no. He saw Biddle lean over and whisper something to the president, Lord Justice Lawrence.

‘Mr Justice Jackson,’ responded Lawrence. ‘The Tribunal feels that the witness should be allowed to make whatever explanation he cares to make in answer to this question.’..

At each thrust and parry by Go?ring, Jacksone became more incensed. Like a bull enraged by the picadors he continued to charge blindly in every direction. Here was a defendant who refused to abide by the rules of the sport, rules that seemed clearly defined by their very status – these were the victors, and those the vanquished. Go?ring however had determined to ridicule Jackson and destroy his authority in this court, and his silver tongue and his fearlessness about death were ready allies to that end.

When Jackson, desperately trying to salvage something from a 1935 document wrongly identified by his team as proof of Nazi planning for a remilitarisation of the Rhineland one year before that event, pointed to the TOP SECRET classification on the paper, as though this were in itself a heinous offence, Go?ring scoffed insolently that he could not recall having seen the secret plans of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff openly published in the pre-war years. There was raucous laughter from all over the court. Jackson ripped off his headphones and threw them down, then petulantly appealed to the judges to call the witness to order – he must answer the questions, and not attempt to deliver lengthy and irrelevant speeches.

Lawrence ruled that Go?ring’s answer was in order.

And this nugget on viscious lying which constituted the official record:

THESE AND similar exchanges show how unreliable, if not downright deceitful, the published transcripts of the Nuremberg trials are. The only true record is the original wire recording, which was subsequently processed onto 2,011 sound discs. The 17,077-page mimeographed transcript, which was of course the only record available to the judges in reaching their conclusions, is erratic, erroneous, and incomplete; it has moreover been doctored, in some cases quite blatantly, to the disadvantage of the defence. Thus the foregoing exchange, which is now available in the National Archives on Nuremberg Trials disc 1440 B, recorded from the original wire recording, was omitted from page 5,661 of the mimeographed daily transcript. It was restored to the (blue-bound) printed volumes only after Milch, checking the  transcripts, protested.

Heydrich, I'm in the middle of Irving's Nuremberg and it's a real treat:

1) the recognized Jewish angle (murderous, relentless, repellent) over-riding Gentile objection in the US gov't circa 1945. 

2) the systematic fixing of the trial and complete disregard for legal principles.

3) the complete variance of the received public version to the truth, a pattern which I first became aware of in 2001 but which is the template for all major events of the last 100 minimum.

I'm in the process of researching WWII and the Nazi phenomenon.  Irving's books are all available for free.  Time to learn some German.  The Irving talks on youtube are very good as well.